Silicon Valley wants voice in high-tech immigration reform

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Garrett Johnson and Ash Rust, co-founders of SendHub, are photographed in their office in Menlo Park, Calif. on Monday, Feb. 4, 2013. Rust, who was born in Britain, had a difficult time acquiring his green card so he can stay and work in the United States. He and company co-founder, American-born, Garrett Johnson are keen on comprehensive immigration reform. (Gary Reyes/ Staff)

Ash Rust, co-founder of SendHub, leads a meeting with his team at their office in Menlo Park, Calif. on Monday, Feb. 4, 2013. (Gary Reyes/ Staff)

Technology-focused immigration has reshaped Silicon Valley diversity and boosted its economic output, but for years the tech world has clamored for upgrading U.S. visa laws enacted when the World Wide Web was still a lab project.

The flaring immigration debate on Capitol Hill is inspiring hope of reform.

One high-tech engineer chafing under what he sees as a likely decline in entrepreneurial spirit is Ash Rush, a British immigrant swimming in the fast-paced world of Bay Area startups. The glacial pace of congressional action to open immigration to more high-tech workers and visionaries astounds and frustrates him.

“The valley will only hold this allure for a limited period of time. Gold rushes happen and disappear,” said Rust, 29, who struggled to shift from a temporary work visa to permanent U.S. residency and now runs an emerging telecommunications firm.

This year may bring a rare opening for immigration legislation that could again shape the Bay Area’s high-tech economy, and Silicon Valley figures big and small are raising their voices. Everyone from Rust to Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo (YHOO), has been flying to Washington, D.C., in recent days to offer suggestions to President Barack Obama and congressional leaders.

Nearly 23 years have passed since America’s last major shift in legal immigration, a 1990 law that added employment-based visas including a temporary one — the H-1B for highly skilled workers — to the pathways into the United States.

Compare our partisan dithering to Canada, Rust says. It announced a new visa targeting startup entrepreneurs last month, and his native United Kingdom launched its foreign entrepreneur magnet in 2011, beating Americans to an idea first introduced but never passed in Congress.

“The only reason the valley has held on to this (success) for so long is because of the glut of talent here,” said Rust, “and it’s unlikely that will hold if we continue to be almost malicious in our behavior toward immigrants.”

Oxford-educated Rust came to California on a temporary O-1 visa for people with “extraordinary ability,” but the company he worked for tanked.

“I was trapped. If I left the job, I would have to leave the country,” he said.

Many tech workers on temporary work or student visas — the most common routes to Silicon Valley — meet similar obstacles when their invitations are about to expire.

“The Bay Area is pretty much the best place to live on the planet,” Rust said. “If you have a math or science background, I don’t think you’d want to be anywhere else.”

His new employer, the social media influence-ranker Klout, sponsored Rust for a green card in 2011, giving him permanent U.S. residency and a path to citizenship. That freed him to cofound Sendhub, a Menlo Park firm that now has 11 employees, three of them immigrants.

But it could have been easier, he said. His co-founder, Garrett Johnson, is a former congressional aide who with Rust’s advice helped persuade his then-boss, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to introduce a “startup visa” in 2011. The bill died but is re-emerging — mentioned by Obama in his immigrant reform blueprint last month.

“Immigrants are job creators. They add value to companies,” Johnson said. “We should not have to make them jump through hoops and wait in limbo while they really have a passion to start a company.”

As Republican and Democratic lawmakers debate a large-scale overhaul of immigration laws, both sides agree they want to invite and keep the world’s “best and brightest.”.

But the more contentious debate over illegal immigration and border security has overshadowed significant differences on how to welcome and keep the highly educated.

Some corporations simply want more temporary H-1B visas, making permanent a short-lived expansion of the annual cap in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“It’s very clear that when the economy is performing where it should, the (current) 65,000 cap nowhere meets the demand for highly skilled talent,” said Robert Hoffman, a lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council.

Other tech voices prefer fixing or replacing the H-1B program, widely criticized for handcuffing foreign workers to one employer and undercutting local high-tech workers. Most legislative proposals, including one being negotiated by a bipartisan group including U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, are likely to emphasize more permanent residency visas — green cards — over temporary workers.

“Green cards are much more important,” said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Both need to be addressed, but if H-1Bs are a solid double, green cards are a home run.” He took a group of Bay Area CEOs and university officials to meet with lawmakers this week

The most idea most favored by both parties is the “STEM green card” granting permanent residency to students who obtain an advanced degree from an American university in the fields of science, technology, engineering or math.

In the House of Representatives, some Republicans want piecemeal reforms that could benefit Silicon Valley business but postpone the debate over 11 million illegal immigrants. Democrats want comprehensive reform, and Silicon Valley voices are treading carefully, hoping for a compromise.

“Let’s not allow victory to be snatched away by thinking that a bill with small component parts has a strong chance of passage, rather than a bill that is truly more comprehensive in nature,” said Guardino.

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